grandeur of Roman Law, and developed their own medley of customs into
the most eccentric and most equitable system in the world. They kept out
the Council of Trent, and the Spanish Armada. They kept out the French
Revolution, and Napoleon. They kept out for a long time the Kantian
philosophy, Romanticism, Pessimism, Higher Criticism, German music,
French painting, and one knows not how many other of the intellectual
experiments that made life worth living, or not worth living, to
nineteenth-century Europe. Their insularity, spiritual as well as
geographical, has whetted the edge of a thousand flouts and gibes.
"Those stupid French!" exclaims the sailor, as reported by De Morgan:
"Why do they go on calling a cabbage a _shoe_ when they must know that
it is a _cabbage?_" This was in general the attitude of what Mr Newbolt
has styled the "Island Race" when on its travels. Everybody has laughed
at the comedy of it, but no one has sufficiently applauded its success.
The English tourist declined to be at the trouble of speaking any
foreign tongue whatsoever; instantly every hotel and restaurant on the
Continent was forced to learn English. He refused to read their books; a
Leipsic firm at once started to publish his own, and sold him his
six-shilling Clapham novels in Lucerne for two francs. He dismissed
with indignation the idea of breakfasting on a roll, and bacon and eggs
were added unto him. In short, by a straightforward policy of studying
nobody else, he compelled everybody else to study him.

Now it is idle to deny this performance the applause which it plainly
deserves. The self-evolution of England, as it may perhaps be called, in
its economic, political, and literary life, offers an admirable model of
concentration and energy. Even where it is a case of obtuseness to other
civilisations, at least as high but of a different type, the verdict
cannot be wholly unfavourable. The Kingdom of Earth is to the
thick-skinned, and bad manners have a distinct vital value. A man, too